Rosa made Celine swear that she wouldn’t tell me just yet. They planned on telling me together, when I came back to America for the holidays. Rosa didn’t want me dropping everything and flying home to fuss over her, like I had done last time. I guess at some point while writing this message, Celine decided to not send it; to respect her mother’s wishes.

Rosa picks up on the third ring.

Tears spring free the second I hear her melodic voice. “How could you not tell me?” I ask, my words shaky.

“Oh, mijita.” She sighs. “Because there’s nothing you can do.”

“We can try!” We were in this exact same situation not even two years ago. Only, the prognosis didn’t seem so bleak back then.

“No! Don’t waste more money and time on trying to fix my diseased body.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s not a waste if it can save you.”

“It can’t, though. Not this time.” I hear it in her voice. She’s already made up her mind. I wonder if she was this resolute before losing her only daughter, if Celine was the only thing she was fighting for. She blows her nose. “I didn’t want you to worry. You’ve already left everything to come and take care of me once. I couldn’t let you do it again.”

Stubborn, stubborn woman! “I do it because I can and because I want to. None of this other stuff matters.”

“It does matter. It matters to all those poor people who you help. All those little children! You save lives. I can’t bear the idea of children starving to death and miserable while you sit here and watch me die.”

“Well, I’m coming back to California as soon as I’m finished here and I’m staying with you.”

Normally, she would keep pushing, arguing with me. For such a small woman, Rosa has fire in her.

Rosa had fire in her.

She simply sighs. “Good night, mijita. Get some rest.”

I listen to the dial tone for a long moment, swiping the tears away with my palms. I’ve dealt with plenty of death, doing what I do. Children who can’t be saved from illness, adults who should have another forty years of life ahead of them, if not for the past forty years of hardship. I cry for them, but I avoid getting too close. This is different. Rosa and Celine were always more my family than my real family. And soon I will have lost them both.

If Celine’s apparent suicide didn’t make sense before, it really doesn’t make sense now. Rosa is dying. That news would have hit Celine hard, but there’s no way she would put her mother through this kind of pain, knowing what was to come. Celine would have stuck by her side until the end. That’s the Celine that I knew.

Could she have changed so much?

Could Celine really have been that sick?

Sucking back a mouthful of bourbon to combat the rising emotional bitterness, I click through Celine’s favorites bar, stopping on her blog. I smile at the header. The Relics Hunter. She’s been running it for years. It was her way of sharing her growing knowledge and her creative mind. Even with a full-time job and all of her treasure-hunting, she was pretty religious about updating the blog with her latest finds, describing the items in detail, and her speculations about where they came from, and what they could mean. There are over seven hundred posts here, some featuring multiple items. That doesn’t surprise me, given that there must be over a thousand collected pieces in this apartment.

I used to read every post. I can’t remember when exactly I got too busy and stopped. We’d both grown busy over the years. What used to be daily phone calls became weekly ones. Then we started relying more on email and texts to keep up on the everyday stuff, and Christmastime to fill each other in on the things that really mattered, curling up with a blanket and a bowl of popcorn on Rosa’s stiff, floral couch.

We could easily go weeks without talking to each other, because when we did talk, it was like no time had passed. I used to think that was great. Now I see that it just made it easier to take Celine’s presence in my life for granted.

There hasn’t been a blog post since August, around the same time she knew that her life was being put on hold.

Searching through her computer files, I find one entitled “Item Catalogue.” Inside are more than three thousand images—multiple shots, at different angles, of each piece in her collection, capturing signatures and markings and particular details.

A wave of relief hits me. This is exactly what Hans needs. Which means I won’t have to do it, thank God. This folder will save me days, I’m guessing. All I need is a large flash drive to copy the images and send them over.

Another thing to add to the list.

I fan through the stack of papers in Celine’s work box haphazardly, my thoughts cycling through the events of the day. And to Jace Everett. On impulse, I type his name into Google and his face appears at the top of the search screen. I begin scrolling through each link, leading to articles about the thirty-one-year-old’s remarkable success, including his education at Princeton that helped him secure a career at the New York branch of one of the largest investment management firms in the country.

A firm that his father helped start decades ago, before he stepped aside to become governor of Illinois.

“Well, that may explain a few things,” I mutter through a sip of bourbon. Not that I can say too much against nepotism.

A magazine article shows up in the search, naming the governor’s son as one of New York City’s most eligible bachelors under thirty-five. It’s a striking picture—a very typical business shot with Jace in a sharp blue pinstripe suit, perched on his desk, the formidable city skyline looming in the window behind him.

My eyes flash to the magazine among Celine’s work things.

The cover matches the photo on the computer screen.

Flipping through it, I quickly find where Celine earmarked the page to identify the start of the article. Only the first paragraph talks about his career—with some extremely impressive stats. The rest focuses on Jace’s interests—sailing, rock-climbing, and golf. Either he’s the most unoriginal guy I’ve ever seen or he has genuinely been molded into the archetypal privileged offspring.

Apparently he’s a budding collector of French fine art, as well, boasting a few pricey Henri Matisse and Edgar Degas paintings that were passed down to him from his maternal grandparents, people of old world wealth.

That would definitely grab Celine’s attention.